Trilateral Offices celebrate 30 years of co-operation and sign declaration to further advance patent systems worldwide

Kyoto, Japan, 16 November 2012
- The heads of the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO),
and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), met in Kyoto, Japan
this week for their 30th annual Trilateral Conference, signing a declaration pledging to
further develop patent systems around the world through improved work-sharing. The conference was preceded by a symposium marking the
anniversary, and a meeting between the offices and industry associations
from the three regions.

Reflecting on the achievements of
three decades of co-operation, EPO President Benoît Battistelli said: "The massive
working effort that we have made together to drive forward world wide common
acquisition and exchange of data has been instrumental in building the search
and examination systems we have today. We started by scanning published patents
from all over Europe, the US and Japan and moved on to capturing and
translating abstracts for the First Page database, and now we are exchanging
and making searchable citations from all parts of the procedure. And it will
continue with the Global Dossier initiatives which we are planning to develop
with our users."

"From the early days including the
BAckfile CONversion project, or BACON, - a cornerstone for IT efforts in 1988
- to the
Patent Prosecution Highway and up to the futuristic Global Dossier concept, the Trilateral Offices have led the way
on international patent co-operation and laid the groundwork for work-sharing
efforts globally," said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property
and Director of the USPTO David Kappos. "These work-sharing efforts have
brought the resources of the world's leading patent authorities to bear on
improving the quality of examination processes and reducing the processing time
for patent applications."

"These accomplishments have been
welcomed not only at the Trilateral Offices but also at other IP offices around
the world. All of these lead to improving global patent systems today," said JPO
Commissioner Hiroyuki Fukano. "It is our current task to build an appropriate framework
in which applicants are able to be granted patents smoothly in every corner of
the world. In order to achieve building truly global patent systems in a global era, we would like to take the
lead in developing such systems."

Recent achievements of the
Trilateral Cooperation include:

Improving
the Common Citation Document (CCD) service by taking into account feedback from
industry in the three regions. The CCD provides easy web access to results from
patent searches carried out by multiple offices for the same invention.

Initiating
and promoting the Global Dossier initiative in the framework of the five
largest intellectual property offices in the world (IP5), which include the
Trilateral Offices plus the IP offices of China
and Korea.
The Global Dossier is a virtual environment providing secure, one-stop access to
and management of information on all patent applications belonging to one patent
family.

Putting
forward concrete proposals for improving the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT),
and agreeing to continue to contribute to its improvement.

About Trilateral Co-operation

The Trilateral Offices process the
majority of patent applications filed worldwide, including international (PCT)
applications. Since 1983, the Trilateral Offices have worked together to
produce new databases and IT systems, and their co-operation has evolved through
conducting various projects designed to solve common challenges. Today the offices
are committed to eliminating unnecessary duplication of work, enhancing patent
examination efficiency and quality, and working to ensure that stable patent
rights can be granted smoothly and easily worldwide.